Here, "suitably endowed" means that the System Control Coprocessor
(#15) has Performance Monitoring Registers, including a CCNT (Cycle
Count) register.
The CCNT register is used in a way similar to the TSC register in
x86 processors by the get_cyclecount(9) function. The entropy-harvesting
thread is a heavy user of this function, and will benefit from not
having to call binuptime(9) instead.
One problem with the CCNT register is that it is 32-bit only, so
the upper 32-bits of the returned number are always 0. The entropy
harvester does not care, but in case any one else does, follow-up
work may include an interrup trap to increment an upper-32-bit
counter on CCNT overflow.
Another problem is that the CCNT register is not readable in user-mode
code; in can be made readable by userland, but then it is also
writable, and so is a good chunk of the PMU system. For that reason,
the CCNT is not enabled for user-mode access in this commit.
Like the x86, there is one CCNT per core, so they don't all run in
perfect sync.
Reviewed by: ian@ (an earlier version)
Tested by: ian@ (same earlier version)
Committed from: WANDBOARD-QUAD
1b9328de56